Dearest Britni,

I was warmed by your thermal tub, the belly of your indiscretions and the way you held those mule-hearts
in plastic jars beneath the cupboard where your favorite cups and coins were kept.  The magic beat of your fingertips made my skin jump crazy out of my shirt and pants.  I wonder if the turnover has always been this way for you, meaning to say, when the trips always ended did you take back the second pillow into the other room, where your ivory curtains opened, and did you feel the need to lock the door to your bedroom.

The word, 'house guest' implies less visitation privileges than actually took place.  I believe it was more of an involved visit.  There were certainly visitation privileges but there was also visitation writ.  I had to keep my jeans clean.  There were no shoes allowed in the bed.  And extracurricular activities were kept to their time tables-- that is to stay that spontaneity occurred only when it fit into the time table.  I was never much for making you lunch in the morning.  It has always been difficult for me to think of the meals before they happened, though I knew what was in every drawer, every closet, every cabinet.  The insides and outs of a decade of dreams.

In short time I became mesmerized with the perfect patterns in your arms and on your legs.  I could crook my head in a way to look at the sunset from under your arm or stand on a chair to look down at the top of your head.  And then one day you told me I was weird.

This time I wanted to be fulfilled.  I did not want to miss a thing.  I made sure to slide my fingers in between your toes, I squeezed the bottoms of your feet with the bottoms of my feet.  There are many recitals, many performances, and even more personal encounters that cannot be recalled to mind, but I am sure they happened.  If I had the opportunity I would attempt to pick your nose again.  Something I did every chance I had though you abhorred it.  To lick the side of your face, the bottom of your chin, the interior of your armpit, the lengths of your legs, and the rims of your lips-- I lived our life to the fullest.

All interactions were encouraged.  We played in sunlight, in nightlight, during day showers, and ate by the seaside.  We traveled to four states, two lakes, and two oceans.  We drove in excess of 20,000 miles, received fifty-seven parking tickets, five speeding tickets, thirty-five thousand two hundred eighty four compliments, fifty-two salutations, fifteen, "you're an adorable couple," three hundred complimentary access, two free tickets to a museum exhibition, took over one hundred fifty flights between the two of us, and received your father's permission.  We slept in showers, swam in baths, and drank from swimming pools.  We shared the bathroom, the bed, and the kitchen sink.  I memorized how many times you rolled over when sleeping, and you told me what I talked about in my sleep.  I knew the five places you lived at and the four places you wanted to.  We danced in nightclubs, in bars, in schoolyards, in back seats and bedrooms, and ballrooms.  There were fifteen black tie events, one wedding, and over two hundred concerts.  I wrote over fifty thousand poems made over three hundred paintings, and took somewhere around twenty-eight thousand pictures.  I once took you to breakfast every morning for a week and dinner every night.  I bought you one hundred twenty six cups of coffee, fifty-two cocktails, and one Shirley Temple.  I only had to help you change clothes thrice, but I helped you undress over a thousand.  I always remembered to lift up you hair if I helped you put on a jacket, and never made you walk on the street side.

There were over 2,000 bands and artists I introduced you too.  You taught me about fashion, about photography, about being a good person.  We sang in the shower, sang in the car, whispered before falling asleep.  I sent you dozens of flowers and you watered them all.

In my favorite yellow chair I do not have any regrets or any wants.  I fulfilled a life time in two years.  I was an upstanding gentleman, always.  And then out of the blue you didn't want me to touch you anymore.  One time in an airport in DC we ran 48 terminals to see each other again.  You taught me not to be afraid of flying, that it's important to be myself.  And when it ended the first time I wrote you two letters a day for three months.

Tomorrow when I wake up I will make the bed, put the music on, smoke a cigarette, then take a shower.  Afterwards I will get dressed, grab my belongings and go get four shots of espresso like I have been doing every day for the past five years.  Everything will be the same.  At the end of the day, after work, after listening to a plethora of music, talking to a plethora of people, I will not talk to you.  After two years two years and 2,163 phone calls, I will not talk to you for two days in a row.  I will lay in my bed and count the mews, but I miss the weight on the mattress, the heat of your whole, the temperature of your voice, and the redolence of your perfume, but I will have no regrets when I rollover thrice, to the right, to the left, and to the right.

They told me the only thing that could cure heartache was war, and since the war wouldn't take me I figure the only thing to do now is take up a life of crime. Gabriel Garcia Marquez says in Love in the Time of Cholera that the only cure for heartache is to find other hearts to break. Five years have passed and I still remember without fail the flint of a lighter, the squint of an eye, and the bell of your dress. I dream a dream each night, sweet variation of the story of you. It comes down to a letter sometimes, I go to the window well with a notebook and a pencil and I draft a sonnet, sometimes a verse, any form of an expression to idle the time it takes for me to find you. I know stars that haven't lived as long. The way I cupped my hands over your ears, the way rapture lived and loved, you kissing me in the shade of the palm trees up their on Notre Damen Ave. I know the curve of the Earth wrapped in the shades of the skin on your body. I live every day for the chance that I will meet you again.

I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”
There's A Wocket In My Pocket by Dr. Seuss